


let that be enough

by apollothyme



Series: as long as the stars are above you [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 07:12:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9112219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollothyme/pseuds/apollothyme
Summary: Yuri wasn’t sure when his feelings shifted from friendship to something that ran deeper.He couldn’t recall the first moment when he looked at Otabek and thought ‘I want to kiss you’, although he sometimes wondered if it came before or after he thought ‘I want to rent an apartment with you somewhere warm and sunny and spend the rest of my life there’. He was sure that it must have come before he started picturing Otabek with him in the shower, although he couldn’t remember when that first happened either.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Этого будет достаточно](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9320186) by [NancyMuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyMuck/pseuds/NancyMuck)



> Massive thanks to my [darling popsicle awesome G](https://twitter.com/reesefinchs) for the beta read!

Yuri wasn’t sure when his feelings shifted from friendship to something that ran deeper.

He couldn’t recall the first moment when he looked at Otabek and thought ‘ _I want to kiss you_ ’, although he sometimes wondered if it came before or after he thought ‘ _I want to rent an apartment with you somewhere warm and sunny and spend the rest of my life there_ ’. He was sure that it must have come before he started picturing Otabek with him in the shower, although he couldn’t remember when that first happened either.

Maybe it had always been there and he had never noticed. When they first met in a random alley of Barcelona, maybe it already meant something else back then. Yuri remembered how he was scared and out of breath while Otabek was calm and spotless as always. Maybe it had been in the way Otabek gave him a helmet without hesitation, inviting Yuri to come along with him, then and for all times afterwards.

After Yuuri and Victor had made a spectacle of themselves for the hundredth time and the evening was over, Yuri had asked Otabek how he had found him. It seemed too much of a coincidence that they had both been walking in the same part of Barcelona, at the same time, and Otabek had just happened to spot him hiding when his fangirls hadn’t.

Otabek’s reaction had been surprising, to say the least. Back then, Yuri didn’t know him well, but he had already been sure of Otabek’s confidence, of the way he moved through the world freely and without fear. In his mind, Otabek was as steady as an islet in the ocean, strong, determined. He didn’t fluctuate, didn’t spike in anger and let hate consume him like Yuri so often did. He didn’t waver or feel embarrass—

“I was actually following you,” Otabek had said as a pink blush colored his cheeks. Yuri stared at him with bugging eyes, transfixed. “I’d been meaning to talk to you for a while and that moment just seemed like the right time to say something. Also, you looked like you needed the help.”

Yuri nodded, which must have been as unusual for him as it was unusual for Otabek to be flustered. It was rare for him to openly agree with other people. Even when he did share their opinion, he always kept it to himself, as if some part of him would crumble the second he opened up to other people.

“Thank you,” Yuri replied, licking his lips to wet them. “You did help.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Otabek said. His confidence had returned, filtering through his words with ease. One of the corner’s of Otabek’s mouth pulled up in a smirk.

“Well, whatever, thank you anyway,” Yuri spat out. He was about to turn around when a wave or regret washed over him and he remembered he didn’t always have to bite. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Good luck.”

Otabek grinned, seemingly unfazed by Yuri’s small outburst. “Goodnight, Yuri, and good luck to you too.”

So maybe it had started then, this thing between him and Otabek that seems to have settled deep inside their bones, crawling so far in that Yuri is sure he’ll never be able to fully pull back — not that he wants to, really.

He knows that it started earlier for Otabek, because Otabek told him so, and when Yuri had tried to tell him that there was a difference — that there was longing and there was wanting, friendship and love, desiring and needing — Otabek had just shaken his head and said, “No, not with you. It’s always been the same with you.”

He spoke with such resolution that Yuri had no choice but to snap his mouth shut and accept it, even if he wasn’t sure he agreed.

: :

The first they had sex, they were in Yuri’s bedroom in his grandfather’s house. Yuri spent a lot of time biting his fingers, the back of his hand, the swell of his wrist, pressing hard enough to draw blood until Otabek grabbed both of his hands and held them tight above Yuri’s head.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said.

“We need to be quiet,” Yuri hissed, just as Otabek rocked against him once more and made him swear out loud. It was like his body was fire, every nerve lightened and on edge. “Otabek—” he said, whispered, shouted for all he knew, interrupted when Otabek kissed him and didn’t let go until they were both coming against against each other.

That time had been amazing, but it didn’t quite beat the first time they had sex in front of a mirror, in Otabek’s apartment in Kazakhstan, which had a great, big mirror in the bathroom that just did _things_ to Yuri. Seeing himself reflected, noticing every little twitch of their bodies, every movement, the flush on their chests and Otabek’s expression behind him — it was almost too much. Almost.

: :

Yuri was _furious_. He was often irritated, living his life in a constant state of annoyance, but it was rare — even for him — to reach this state of unfiltered fury. He wanted to punch something or someone, possibly himself but preferably the rest of the world. He had already smashed his phone against one of the walls at the stadium locker room, which had been satisfying for a fraction of a second before it made him even angry.

The sound of his hand connecting with the door to his hotel room didn’t register in his ears, but he felt the sharp pain that surfaced on his fingers. It was like a poisonous flower, blossoming in his hand before it travelled down the rest of his arm.

He took in a deep breath and started to count backwards from ten in Japanese. He needed to calm down. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He couldn’t just shout and fight when he got angry, even if that was all he wanted to do.

“Have you forgotten your room key or is this your way of expressing a hate for doors?” someone asked.

Yuri took another deep breath. Maybe not all he wanted.

“What are you doing here?” he asked and then, because he wasn’t done hurting himself, he added, “Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”

He turned to look at Otabek, who shrugged. “Not really,” he said as he took a step closer. “You know I’m not one to party during these events.”

“You just secured a spot in the Grand Prix Final, I’d say that warrants at least some celebration,” he ground out, turning away from Otabek to stare at his hand, which was still connected to a wooden surface.

“Yuri,” Otabek said, calm and steady, always so fucking calm and steady. “This doesn’t define you.”

“It defines my career,” he argued.

“No, your career is defined by all the medals you’ve won, not by a single mistake.”

“A mistake that cost me a place at the Grand Prix final!”

“A _mistake_ ,” Otabek insisted, practically growling out the words.

“Whatever, like you care,” Yuri said, reaching into his pocket so he could pull out his key card and finally enter his bedroom, where he could have a meltdown in private without annoying bastards pestering him.

“Of course I care, I’m your friend!” Otabek said — no, _shouted_ — which was so rare for him, even rarer than Yuri getting this mad, that Yuri froze and just stared at Otabek with his clenched fists and his carefully arranged hair. Yuri had spent over ten minutes combing it before they’d left for the stadium, wanting to make it look just right. 

Otabek was still wearing his skating outfit with his sports jacket thrown on top. Beneath it was a gold medal from when Otabek took the podium at the Trophée de France.

Meanwhile, there was nothing on top of Yuri’s chest, not even a freaking bronze medal. He had crashed and burned, figuratively, landing in fifth place after he had lost his footing attempting a quadruple. It had ruined his chances of going to the Grand Prix final for the first time since he was fifteen and Yuri didn’t know how to deal with it. 

The worst part was that he had no one to blame but himself. The quadruple flip didn’t even figure into his normal routine, but after seeing JJ score above the hundreds once more with impossible ease, Yuri had immediately desired to do more; to do better. It was a stupid decision, rash above all else. He had barely mastered the quadruple in practice and never tried it in competition before.

“Your concern as a friend is duly noted and dismissed,” Yuri said, wanting to hurt as much as he could with his words, just this once, wanting to make Otabek realize how much Yuri hated it when he said those words. Friend. It was always friend with him. Even after they’d known each other for two years, growing closer and closer with each passing day, it seemed he had never be anything but a bloody _friend_ to him. “Fuck this,” Yuri added, finally getting his keycard inside the slot and throwing his door open.

: :

Yuri and Otabek spent a lot of time apart because of competitions, even if Otabek had moved to Russia after they first got together. Yuri detested being apart, becoming even more sullen than usual and snapping at anyone who so much as looked at him wrong.

Everyone noticed the shift in his behavior, but few people ever dared to bring it up, afraid to engage his wrath. Few people except those assholes, obviously.

“Oh, what’s gotten into Yurio?” one of them asked.

“You don’t think it could be because Otabek’s returning today, do you?” the other — fake Yuri — replied.

“Will you two shut up and fuck off?” Yuri shouted. “And stop calling me Yurio!” he added, although that was only half-heartedly. He knew that after three years, the odds of those two (and all their family and friends, and even Yuri’s family and friends, to the point where the only people who ever called him by his given name these days were grandpa and Otabek) dropping the nickname were slim to none.

“Yurio! We’re just happy that you’re happy!” Victor said, twirling in the air like some insufferable ballerina and edging closer to Yuri so he could pull him into a hug.

“You were even singing earlier. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing before,” fake Yuuri said.

Yuri scoffed, but didn’t deny their claims. He _had_ been singing earlier in the day after all. It was just some random pop song1 he had heard on the radio yesterday and had stuck to his head.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Yuri said, but he knows they don’t believe him because even he doesn’t believe himself.

Victor winks at him and is about to open his mouth to start on one of his dramatic ramblings when the door to the ice rink opens and someone else comes in.

“Are you having a group hug?” Otabek asked. Yuri shoved the disgusting couple away and skipped to Otabek’s side.

“They’re just being idiots as usual,” Yuri said, loudly, making sure the idiots in question heard him loud and clear. Quieter, he added, “Did you have a good trip?”

Otabek shrugged and pulled him closer. “It was alright. Travelling isn’t really fun when you’re not around to start fires and inspire revolutions.”

“Ah- _ah_ ,” Yuri replied, but he was sure his sarcasm didn’t have its real effect with the way he was smiling.

: :

He was about to slam the door shut when Otabek threw a foot in and stopped him. “Don’t be like this,” he asked. “Don’t shut me out.”

“Just go away.”

“I don’t want to. Yuri, please. Let me in,” Otabek said, looking at Yuri with those huge brown eyes that might as well belong to a puppy. Yuri sighed and moved away, letting Otabek enter the room and close the door after him.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Yuri told him, which wasn’t true at all, but it was what he felt at the time. Having Otabek around disgruntled him. Yuri wanted to hold his fury close, keep it alive until he dragged him to the point of exhaustion and he fell asleep. It was what he always did and it wasn’t comforting, it wasn’t good, but it was what he had always done until—

Until—

“No, I’m not,” Otabek murmured, wrapping his arms around Yuri and pulling him so that were standing together, chest to back, so close Yuri could hear Otabek’s heartbeat against his left ear, still a little too fast to be normal. He must have run from the stadium to the hotel to catch up to Yuri.

“No, you’re not,” Yuri confessed, closing his eyes to make the rest of the world disappear until nothing existed but the weight of Otabek’s arms around his shoulders and the sound of his heartbeat. 

“You’ll come back, stronger than ever, and you’ll take the gold at the final next year. I know it,” Otabek said.

Yuri twisted in Otabek’s arms until they were standing face to face. Yuri had grown since they’d first met so that he and Otabek were now the same height. Give him one or two more years and he was sure to overtake the older man. 

“You _must_ win this year. You can’t let either dumbass Victor or second-rate Yuuri get the gold.”

Otabek chuckled. “I won’t. For you,” he whispered.

Yuri huffed and looked away, pushing against Otabek’s chest until he could spring free from the other man’s grip. “You have got to stop saying shit like that.”

“What? What did I say?” Otabek asked. He sounded genuinely confused, which only served to further annoy Yuri.

“That ‘I will win for you’! How can you say stuff like that? That’s what couples say to each other, not friends.”

“How do you know that?” Otabek asked.

Yuri waved his arms in the air as he tried to put his thoughts into words without sounding like a complete idiot. “How do I know that? How does anyone know that? It’s just because it is. Friends don’t say stuff like that. People like Victor and Yuuri do and they’re far more than friends.”

“Stop comparing yourself to others. You always do that and what for?”

“Because that’s what people do!” Yuri shouted, his voice getting louder as the conversation dragged on. He knew he shouldn’t have let Otabek into his room, not after he had made that ridiculous comment. Yuri always got flustered when Otabek brought up their _friendship_ , but today that resentment was shaper because of his defeat. 

“Since when does Yuri Plisetsky do something just because everyone else is doing it?” Otabek asked. He sounded irritated, but when Yuri looked at his face, all he saw was pain. As clear as the sky on a sunny day, written in the upwards curve of his eyebrows and the color on his cheeks.

Seeing Otabek like that was enough to make Yuri deflate. He sighed and shook his head, trying to clear all the cobwebs out.

“I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it,” he said.

There was a pause and then Otabek whispered, “Yes, you did or you wouldn’t have said it. You never say what you don’t mean. At least not to me.”

Yuri shook his head again and took the three steps that now separated them so that they were close once more. He grabbed one of Otabek’s clenched fists and pulled until they were holding hands, willing Otabek to understand. The words he wanted to say piled up inside his mouth, growing heavier with each passing second. He decided the best way to do it was with the same kind of guts and courage he had whenever he stepped onto the ice.

“Yes, but I didn’t mean it like that. I meant I don’t want you to say that stuff to me as just a friend. I want more.”

It was a love confession or at least as close to a love confession anyone would ever get from him. It was terrifying to finally say out loud what had been on his mind for who knows how long, but Yuri was still glad he said it. They had been building up to this — or at least something close to this — for two years and now there was no turning back.

“Oh,” was Otabek’s ingenious reply.

“Are you really that surprised?” Yuri asked, leaning back far enough to watch Otabek’s expression. Fear was starting to creep into his emotions. He could accept Otabek not feeling the same way. He didn’t want it, but he could accept it, vaguely, in the same sort of way he accepted the presence of tuna sandwiches and Mila in his life. But the idea that Otabek just didn’t know, that this was all some one-sided illusion, that was almost too much.

“No. Sort of. I’ve always known we share something special, but I was never sure you liked me in the way it meant you want to _be_ with me.”

Yuri frowned. “What kind of dumb logic is that, Beka? If I like you why would I not want to be with you?”

Otabek laughed, making the sound ring like a bell around the room. “There are lots of ways to like a person.” 

If possible, Yuri frowned even harder and decided he had had enough with Otabek’s calm foolishness. “I’m going to kiss you now, so shut up,” he said and suddenly Otabek was completely still, staring at him with the same warm eyes that Victor had captured in far too many Snapchat and Instagram screenshots. 

Otabek wasn’t Yuri’s first kiss, but he was his first kiss that meant something and was given while fully sober.

His lips were slightly chapped and for a couple of seconds neither of them moved, which was kind of awkward until the moment Otabek wrapped his arms around Yuri’s waist to pull him closer, pushing their bodies together. Yuri bit Otabek’s bottom lip in retaliation, deepening the kiss. 

By the time they separated, they were both out of breath and all Yuri could think was that he still wanted — needed — more. He said so out loud, which made Otabek pause.

“Are you sure? You’re only seventeen, we shouldn’t take things too far.”

Yuri glared at him. “Do I look like some kind of fragile damsel to you? I’m not gonna break because you touch me, Beka.”

Otabek kissed him again. If he was trying to get Yuri to shut up, he’d found a great method of doing so.

“I’m just checking,” whispered and they didn’t talk much for the rest of the night, medals and tournaments all but forgotten, if only for that evening.

: :

Years later, Yuri could still picture that first kiss as if he’d seen it in a HD video, because even though he couldn’t remember when he had first looked at Otabek and thought ‘ _I’m in love with you_ ’, he could never forget the first time he did something about his feelings.

There were plenty of memorable moments in their relationship. Not thoughts, which always seemed as fleeting as water, but actions, like their first real date in the canals of Venice (Yuri had ruled that Barcelona didn’t count, despite Otabek’s insistence that it did). They strolled hand in hand through the city for over two hours until they found Victor and Yuuri had fallen into the water while trying to spy on them, which was hilarious right until the moment Yuri fell too while trying to help them (assholes!).

And there was so much more. Their first fight, their first road trip, their first season without either Victor or Yuuri there (Yuri didn’t miss them at all, seriously) and the first time Yuri managed to say a whole sentence in Kazakh.

In a way, the rest of their lives was filled with nothing but firsts.

 

 

 

It was a My Chemical Romance song.1

 

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